


Na

by Khantael



Category: Warchild Series - Karin Lowachee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khantael/pseuds/Khantael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suddenly, everything had changed. After Warchild, both Niko and Jos need a period of time to adjust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Na

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dea (dea_liberty)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dea_liberty/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy!

“I want to stay on _Macedon_.”

There is a moment of pause, a moment like a blade coated in poison has slipped unnoticed into his skin. He freezes, both in action and in temperature. But it is only a moment. He does not like it, but deep down somewhere Niko has been expecting this.

Years ago, he had pushed a war torn orphan back into the war that traumatised him. He is not proud of it, but it was necessary to secure an end to the fighting that was threatening the existence of the striviirc-na. He had trusted Jos-na, and it had paid dividends, but it also had driven a wedge between them. Now they are like strangers, staring across the years. He can not shake from his head the image of seeing him again, this young man with bruises covering his face and a dead expression and thinking, this is something I have done.

He is no longer a child, and has a right to make his own decisions, especially with his mission being performed so effectively in the first place. Niko tells himself this was a risk from the decision he made, that despite a feeling of great reluctance, he had sent the boy away anyway. He had left as Jos-na and returned as Jos-dan, every inch the _ka’redan_ that he was. Niko is in parts proud, and in parts sad.

For years, the boy had been dragged around. Since his Starling, he had been dragged around by adults, first to _Genghis Khan_ , then Aaian-na and finally _Macedon_. A _buntla-na_ he had been, but he was a _buntla-na_ no more. He has chosen his own place now.

(“I’m not yours.”)

Even if that place is not with Niko. Niko, who has no right now to ask Jos-dan to stay after sending him away in the first place. He tells himself it does not hurt, but sometimes the sacrifice he has made does not seem worth it.

But only sometimes.

* * *

Niko’s face shutters, and I can’t read his expression. It reminds me of when I first met him, of when I was staring at a face that looked like no human I’d ever met, with no clues to what the man was thinking. I’d learned to read Niko over time, but being in the Hub for so long seems to have dulled my skills.

“Nikolas-dan,” I prompt.

“They will take you back,” he says, more question than statement.

“Yes.”

It’s not quite as far away as it’d once have been. With Niko and Azarcon beginning negotiations, I’m between the two of them anyway. It’s a show of good faith for me to be able to step back on Azarcon’s ship, despite everything, and survive. A known sympathizer, living on a Hub carrier, to show we all want this to succeed.

And I have friends there, if they’ve got over the want to swing at me. I might avoid Dorr for a bit. He’s unpredictable. I have ties to Aaian-na, too, but they’re still a bit dream-like at the moment. Niko has been some distant spectre for so long, someone I’ve heard of and took orders from but not actually seen. I hadn’t been allowed to know where he was; he could have been dead and I wouldn’t have known. I know why, but it didn’t make it easier at the time.

There’s a silence. Aaian-na sympathisers don’t really do casual conversation, and I’ve never been great at it either. Many silences are comfortable, but this one is awkward, as I root around for words that have scattered from my head like dust.

“The negotiations start tomorrow,” I say, a statement of fact that neither of us need to hear again. We know. We’ve been working towards this, and I’d never thought we’d pull it off.

“Yes.”

We’re talking in Ki’hade. It’s helpful for me to get some practise, because it’s been so long since I’ve been able to speak it, so long since I’ve been able to think about it as anything other than a shootable offence. The words had fled my mind like criminals on _Genghis Khan_ , just at the moment when I’d truly needed them, but I’d caught them in the end. Now, without that immediate pressure, the words have started resurfacing with relative ease. It’s a relief, since Niko’s got me playing translator.

We’d spoken a lot not long after everything kicked off, but I’d run out of things to say. There are thoughts swimming in my mind, but not ones I can tell Niko.

It feels odd standing on _Turundrlar_. There’s a crew consisting of sympathisers and striviirc-na, some people I know. Even the Caste Master is here now, ready for the negotiations, and I can’t look him in the eye.

The last time I stared down striviirc-na faces, and human faces tattooed with the unique striviirc-na symbols, it had been down the barrel of a gun. Some of those were Ash’s. Maybe some of them weren’t. I don’t want to ask Niko, who had told me long ago to do what needed to be done. But it’s hard to stand on this ship, and remember what I’ve done in the name of stopping this war.

So I don’t talk about it. It’s just another obstacle between Aaian-na and myself to clamber over in this peace process. One day, I’ll get there.

* * *

The negotiations haven’t long started when they get postponed. Captain Azarcon’s son has been targeted by pirates. No need to guess why. Or who. We’re on a leap to Austro before you can say “Go” when the news breaks, and then we’re back again. With Azarcon’s son, who is put out that the war (the _peace_ ), put his life on hold. It’s okay if it’s anyone else. 

Captain Azarcon sends me to tell Niko about getting back to the negotiations. He may run to fetch his son, but it’s business as usual when he returns – he knows that we can’t let the peace process get undermined.

I’m thinking as I head through the worn hallways of _Turundrlar._ The decision to stay on _Macedon_ had been my own, of course, but it had been strange to leave Niko so soon after uniting with him. I hadn’t seen him for years, so I’m surprised to find that the departure still rankles. I half wonder if maybe that’s it, that our ships meeting up really has just been a dream and things are the same as they always are, but it’s not. There’s always reminders.

Once I’d been a jet, now the narrowed, suspicious eyes always on me reminded me that now I was just a symp, and what was a symp doing on an EarthHub carrier anyway? Much less a face they could recognise.

“They’ll come around,” the Captain had said dismissively, safe in the knowledge his crew does what he tells them, like it or not; he’s the God of his own ship.

“They will learn,” Niko had said, but his eyes were thoughtful. If something happened to me on that ship, I didn’t know what Niko would do. Probably nothing good.

I slip into Niko’s room. He’s alone. I could have commed ahead, but I didn’t. It’s not a surprise that I’m back; it’s hard to miss a huge carrier docking next to you, especially a carrier you were at war with not long before. I see surprise on his face and a slight smile, before it disappears suddenly, as if it was ashamed of itself. We stare at each other.

“Captain Azarcon says we reconvene at oh-nine-hundred next shift,” I report to him.

“Yes,” he says, “That is acceptable.”

I nod at him. The words still aren’t there. I’ve never talked a lot, but Hub Humans tended to fill silence with words, to draw me into conversation by tying me in a net of words made of conversation threads you need to unravel to escape from. I’d grown used to it, I suppose.

This time, Niko surprises me.

“The son of the captain…”

“Ryan,” I supply.

Niko acknowledges me. “Ryan-na. He is well.”

I nod cautiously. I know the captain well enough to know that if he wasn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here negotiating. The pirates would be burning. If anyone had thought they’d seen fierce before, they’d be experiencing cold fury right now. But his son’s fine, physically, so here we are. “Yeah, he’s well.”

“Like you were well.”

I try not to wince. Me, after Falcone. The first time.

“He’ll be fine.” I hesitate for a moment, but I trust Niko. If I didn’t, what would have been the point of all this? We wouldn’t be sitting here. “He’s on _Macedon_. The captain wants me to train him.”

I wonder if Niko’s thinking what I am: that Azarcon has brought his son to a safe place; on his ship, next to a striviirc-na war ship. How times have changed, how the universe must have flipped on its axis, for them.

“You, an instructor.” He sounds amused. I know the feeling. I just nod.

Niko says, “He appreciates the peace,” and it’s a striviirc-na question without being a question. It’s also hard to answer. I’ve only met Ryan Azarcon once, but I wasn’t exactly impressed. Azarcon had shown me a photo of his much younger son once, and it’s hard to mesh the photo with the reality.

“He only knows the war from the Send, really,” I say cautiously.  “I don’t think it’s hit him yet.” The only thing that had nearly hit him were bullets, and that seemed oddly incompetent. Pirates wouldn’t take aim somewhere that they weren’t confident they could make the shot, and most would know their own ability despite their tendency to arrogance.

“The Send,” he echoes, and it says it all. The Send has never exactly been balanced, but it seems to have gone especially rabid lately. There’s a constant swarm of medees buzzing about on Chaos trying to get close, waving cameras and microphones around and getting nowhere. The angrier they get about the lack of answers, the more they make up with their barb-tipped tongues. Nobody will complain about their xenophobic casts for fear of being branded by a sympathizer.

“I’d better go,” I say. I still need to check in with Otter, plus I need my mind fresh for translating next shift – I feel like I haven’t stopped since that bullet was fired. Since before. Niko knows this.

He doesn’t say goodbye, but it’s not his way. I hesitate, then reach out to him. It’s the briefest hug, just a few seconds, and Niko freezes in surprise too. I step well away before he processes what happened, then I turn around and leave.

This is all just the beginning.

* * *

Niko stares after Jos-dan, the man who had somehow become a boy again for a few seconds, and finds himself smiling faintly. 

He had thought that perhaps, somewhere, Jos-dan resented him for sending him away. He remembered all too well the boy’s reaction when he had initially been given this mission, and thought it would only fester. He’d thought that maybe he’d lose everything.

His choice to stay on _Macedon_ was not to do with Niko, but to do with living his own life.

Despite what Jos-dan may think, he understands Azarcon’s attitude. This inicident has taught him that the man will do many things for his son, a vulnerable point in his otherwise tough exterior.

He has no family left anymore other than his mother, and he never had a family of his own in the first place, but he almost feels like he does. Somewhere over the years he had stopped thinking of the boy in terms of value to the war, and started thinking of him as some sort of equivalent to a son. His mother had approved. Ash had not.

Around them, the war goes on and on, but maybe they can all do something here. Maybe they can all create a safe future.

For now, all that they can do is try.

**Author's Note:**

> I never realised how hard writing both Jos and Niko is, since neither of them really talk a lot! Trying to get them to have a conversation was like bashing my head against a brick wall, haha. Hopefully it came out okay!


End file.
